This is the true story of Mark Sakamoto’s grandparents’ experiences during WWII and how those experiences shaped their lives – but also how they chose to take back control in spite of them.
The first section of the book alternates between two stories. His maternal grandfather’s experiences as a young soldier sent to Hong Kong and captured by the Japanese, who would keep him as a prisoner for the duration of the war, and his paternal grandmother’s experiences as a Japanese-Canadian, stripped of property, employment and freedom and sent to work as a slave labourer on a farm in Alberta. The second part of the book is what came after, and how Sakamoto’s parents came to fall in love. Their parents’ extreme experiences during the war should have left them pitted against one another, and unable to accept their children’s relationship. But instead they set aside their historical traumas and opened their homes and their hearts to one another. This is the inspiration for the book’s title.
I found this book hooked me nearly instantly. The first section is written beautifully, but also has edge-of-your seat storytelling. I got to the end of one chapter and just couldn’t stop reading because I had to find out what was going to happen next. I was impressed that I was equally invested in both stories – normally split narrative leaves me slogging through one perspective to find out what happens next in the other. He brought both the POW camps and rural Alberta to life and told the stories with such detail that it’s amazing to think that he wasn’t there himself – that he cobbled together these stories second-hand.
One of the reasons I was interested in reading this book is that it isn’t your typical WWII story. I haven’t read any books about what was done to Japanese-Canadians during the war (though I was aware of some of it, if not the extent), nor have I read any accounts of Canadians who fought overseas, or any who became POWs. So for me, this book contained perspectives I was really interested to experience. I’m very glad I did, as upsetting as they were. I grew to care deeply for Sakamoto’s grandparents, and could tell from how he wrote their stories just how much he looked up to and respected them both for their strength, resilience and ability to love openly despite their painful pasts.
The second half of the book deals with Sakamoto’s own childhood and immediate family, starting with his parents’ relationship. But it wasn’t what I expected. Given the title of the book I expected there to be more about how his grandparents felt about their children’s relationship, possibly even some misgivings, and some exploration of how they dealt with accepting it. But that part of the story was only briefly touched on – it consists mainly of one meal his grandmother cooked for her future in-laws, and doesn’t have any of the depth or interior viewpoint that made the first section so poignant. It felt distanced and glossed over. And from that point, the book pretty much went downhill for me.
Sakamoto discusses his parents’ separation, his mother’s issues with addiction and how it destroyed her life and deeply wounded her sons. He focuses mainly on this part of his family, barely bringing his father or extended family into the story. It felt less like the conclusion to a story written for an audience, and more his attempt to come to terms with the loss of his mother and his own guilt over it. It’s a very sad story, and has obviously haunted him – perhaps the strongest element of forgiveness in this entire book is that which he feels he needs from himself and his mother for his inability to save her from herself.
While I understand his need to work out his own story, from the perspective of the reader it lacked the style and depth of the earlier sections. Strangely, the part of the book he created out of other people’s stories felt more intimate and emotional than his own. Perhaps this is because it was hard for him to talk about his own childhood, and he wasn’t able to dig deep for the emotions because of that. It left me feeling like the story really could have ended with a better and more encompassing account of his grandparents’ feelings about and reconciliation with their own histories to support his parents’ marriage. That would have felt like the more natural end to the story, and I feel like the book would have been better for it.
In terms of how this book fits into this year’s Canada Reads theme of “one book to open your eyes,” I can see why it was selected. The perspectives I mentioned earlier are ones not often read about in WWII stories, and I think it’s important – for Canadians in particular – to learn about Canadian experiences in the war, particularly those of Japanese descent. We are far from a blameless utopia, and that history needs to be learned about. So for that I applaud this book, and do see a lot of value in it.
While I had some issues with the content decisions in this book, because the first section was so well done, I would still recommend it. It has a lot of heart, and a lot of history.
If any of you have read this book, I’d love to hear from you. What did you make of it? Did you feel similarly to me about the second half of the book, or did you think it worked? How do you feel it addresses the Canada Reads theme? If you haven’t read it, are you interested in picking it up?
The heart-rending true story of two families on either side of the Second World War-and a moving tribute to the nature of forgiveness
When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean traded his quiet yet troubled life on the Magdalene Islands in eastern Canada for the ravages of war overseas. On the other side of the country, Mitsue Sakamoto and her family felt their pleasant life in Vancouver starting to fade away after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Ralph found himself one of the many Canadians captured by the Japanese in December 1941. He would live out his war in a prison camp, enduring beatings, starvation, electric feet and a journey on a hell ship to Japan, watching his friends and countrymen die all around him. Mitsue and her family were ordered out of their home and were packed off to a work farm in rural Alberta, leaving many of their possessions behind. By the end of the war, Ralph was broken but had survived. The Sakamotos lost everything when the community centre housing their possessions was burned to the ground, and the $25 compensation from the government meant they had no choice but to start again.
Forgiveness intertwines the compelling stories of Ralph MacLean and the Sakamotos as the war rips their lives and their humanity out of their grasp. But somehow, despite facing such enormous transgressions against them, the two families learned to forgive. Without the depth of their forgiveness, this book’s author, Mark Sakamoto, would never have existed. – Goodreads
Book Title: Forgiveness
Author: Mark Sakamoto
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: HarperCollins Publishers
Released: June 3, 2014
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Pages: 272
Date Read: March 1-17, 2018
Rating: 7/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.9/5 (565 ratings)
